Lightning Conduits - While Lei Shen is in range of a Lightning Conduit he will power it, granting him an additional ability specific to that Lightning Conduit. The energy level of the Conduit increases the longer Lei Shen is charging it, increasing damage dealt by the granted ability. When the Conduit's power reaches 100 energy, it will increase the level of the Conduit, and the Conduit's energy will reset to 0.

North Conduit: Static Shock - Lei Shen charges the target with Static Shock after 8 sec. Static Shock inflicts 1,000,000 Nature damage divided among all players within 8 yards. As the level of the Static Shock Conduit increases, the number of targets Lei Shen afflicts with Static Electricity will also increase.

East Conduit: Diffusion Chain - Inflicts 100,000 Nature damage, chaining to nearby enemies. When an enemy is hit by Diffusion Chain, a Diffused Lightning spawns at the location. As the level of the Diffusion Chain Conduit increases, the spawned Diffused Lightning elementals grow more powerful.

Diffused Lightning - Diffusion Chain creates a Diffused Lightning for every target it strikes. Diffused Lightning's attacks cause Chain Lightning. In Heroic, the Diffused Lightning will fixate on the player that it spawned from.

South Conduit: Overcharge - Lei Shen Overcharges a target player. The player becomes rooted and after 6 sec causes Overcharge to burst, creating a torus of electric energy around the target to quickly expands creating a ring with a safe area in the middle. Inflicts 150,000 Nature damage, stunning effected targets for 3 sec. As the level of the Overcharge Conduit increases, the number of targets Lei Shen afflicts with Overcharge will also increase.

West Conduit: Bouncing Bolt - Lei Shen conjures Bouncing Bolts that target random locations on the ground. Each Bolt inflicts 110,000 Nature damage split among enemies within 6 yards. If the Bouncing Bolt does not impact with an enemy, an Unharnessed Power is formed, and the Bouncing Bolt will bounce again. As the level of the Bouncing Bolt Conduit increases, the number of Bouncing Bolts that Lei Shen conjures will also increase.

Unharnessed Power - When Bouncing Bolts impact the ground and are not absorbed by enemies, an Unharnessed Power is unleashed.

Stage One: Thunderstruck! - Lei Shen equips his Axe, Thunder, which he can throw with deadly accuracy and cause lightning to strike the ground wherever it lands. Lei Shen will charge any Conduit that he is near.

Discharged Energy - If Lei Shen is not charging a Conduit, he will Discharge electricity, inflicting increasing Nature damage every 0.5 sec.

Maim - If the target of Decapitate gets far enough from Lei Shen, they are safe from Decapitation and instead are merely maimed.

Thunderstruck - Lei Shen winds up to hurl his axe at a target location, inflicting 1,500,000 Nature damage to nearby enemies. The damage inflicted decreases the farther away an enemy is from the impact point.

Intermission: Supercharge Conduits! - At 70% health, Lei Shen casts Supercharge Conduits, becoming invulnerable and activating all four Conduits at once, supercharging them and increasing their level by one. Lei Shen can only maintain Supercharge Conduits for 45 seconds.

Overloaded Circuits - The Conduit with the highest charge after Supercharge Conduits expires becomes Overloaded, disabling the Conduit. An Overloaded Conduit inflicts 75,000 Nature damage every 1 sec to that quadrant of the room.

Stage Two: Lightning Will End You! - Lei Shen equips his Polearm, Lightning, allowing him to call lightning from the sky. Lei Shen will charge any Conduit that he is near.

Discharged Energy - If Lei Shen is not charging a Conduit, he will Discharge electricity, inflicting increasing Nature damage every 0.5 sec.

Fusion Slash - Lei Shen slashes at the target with his polearm, inflicting 550,000 Nature damage and increases damage taken by Fusion Slash by 50% for 45 sec.

Ball Lightning - The Ball Lightning rushes towards the farthest enemy, inflicting increasing Nature damage based on the distance it traveled to the target.

Lightning Whip - Lei Shen cracks a Lightning Whip across the floor, inflicting 750,000 Nature damage to enemies within 80 yards in front of him, leaving a Lightning Bolt behind on the ground that can be avoided by jumping over it.

Intermission: Supercharge Conduits! - At 30% health, Lei Shen casts Supercharge Conduits, becoming invulnerable and activating all four Conduits at once, supercharging them and increasing their level by one. Lei Shen can only maintain Supercharge Conduits for 45 seconds.

Overloaded Circuits - The Conduit with the highest charge after Supercharge Conduits expires becomes Overloaded, disabling the Conduit. An Overloaded Conduit inflicts 75,000 Nature damage every 1 sec to that quadrant of the room.

Stage Three: Master of Thunder and Lightning - Lei Shen equips both his Axe and Polearm wielding both Thunder and Lightning against his enemies. Lei Shen cast Overwhelming Power and consume all electricity from the Throne of Thunder, destroying any remaining functional Conduits, preventing them from being activated anymore.

Overwhelming Power - Lei Shen absorbs all of the electrical power from the Throne of Thunder, destroying any remaining functional Conduits, preventing them from being activated anymore. Overwhelming Power causes his melee attacks to inflict 15,000 Nature damage over 1 sec.

Providing an environment where players can compete in the spirit of fair play is extremely important to us, particularly in rated Player versus Player combat. As part of that commitment we regularly monitor gameplay, and have discovered an issue where some Rated Battleground teams have exploited the queuing system to obtain high team ratings and engage in win trading.

These, and all, exploitative activities are absolutely prohibited. We will investigate the situation carefully, and players that have been found to have participated in exploitation will be subject to the appropriate actions against their World of Warcraft accounts. In the meantime, we are currently working to resolve any remaining issues with the queue system to prevent this behavior in the future.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Cross Realm Arena Teams
It would definitely be cool to team up with friends who are playing on realms other than your own for arena. A while back, Ghostcrawler said on Twitter that he would also like to see cross-realm arena teams in World of Warcraft, however at this point in time we don't have any plans to implement a feature that enables you to search for or create an arena team cross-realm. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

WoW Over TimeSo in summary, the communities are still there, it's just that by default you don't have to belong to them any more, you need to actively want to participate in them. Seems to me that this caters to everybody better than being excluded from a large amount of content just because you couldn't find a group.
I personally think this is quite true.

The picture linked by the OP is one that I think speaks to a lot of us who have been playing this game for years, it certainly speaks to the nostalgic old-timer in me, and it made me think back on some of those early guilds I was in and the good times I had back then... I think most of us will never forget that great first guild we were in where great bonds of friendship were established while learning the game and playing together.

Not all guilds stand the test of time, just like not all real life friendships stand the test of time. People grow apart, and so does guilds. In real life I sometimes wonder how old friends of mine I haven't seen in years are doing, or what happened to my old class mates that I used to have such a good time with, but since those days I have made new friends and formed new great friendships and those are the ones that matter today.

I have friends on my friends lists in-game who I do not see log in any more for various reasons. Some have re-rolled, some are playing on their alts, some have moved to another realm, some have quit, etc. But while many old friends on my friend are no longer active, I should never forget that I have many other friends on my friends list who are still playing, and some of those friends I didn't have before when my old friends were active. In fact my friends list has grown ever since it became possible to add RealID and BattleTag friends, and I am still having just as much fun playing with friends today as I did back in the old days, even if those friends I play with are not the same as the old ones. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Content Difficulty FeedbackSimple - Normal Elegon and HC elegon are two different things and aimed for (imo) to two different kind of audiences. No ?
There aren't really different audiences that you can put on neat little boxes, though. Of course, hardcore players will get first to the Heroic boss, and will have an easier time fighting him. But there's nothing that prevents a "normal" player from becoming "hardcore", the thing is, that's something progressive, you don't become a hardcore raider overnight, so what is just hard enough for you as a Heroic boss is still easy for the person to your left, but too hard for the person to your right.

This means it's not as simple as saying "hey, if you can't kill Elegon Heroic, stick to normals, that's your place". Because there'll surely be players that are right in-between, normals too easy for them, heroics still too hard.

We improve in life and in game trough experience (and personal perks), but if experience is too simple and fire does not burn and voidzone does not kill - we do not learn to move from fire. If dragon's tail does not bend, we do not learn to stand on its side.
This is definitely true. The gaming scene has changed a lot over the last 20 years, though.

While it was something very restricted to people with computers and an interest in videogames back then, now it's something mainstream where a grandmother or a complete illiterate in computers can insert a disc and start playing. And so the games, the genres, and the media itself has adapted to its new demographic. A decade ago or so, a MMO with varying difficulties, tools to find other players in a convenient way, etc, would have been seen by many as unconceivable, yet nowadays, there're players that pretty much expect those things to be in a game before they consider trying it. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

[Suggestion] Bring back the Night!
Wow! Alright alright, we hear you. This seems almost like a unanimous opinion on this thread…
We’ll let the devs know how you feel about this. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Racials Feedback
Racials have an intrinsic inequality; it’s very hard to get away from that if we want to make them all very distinctive at the same time. I wouldn’t dare to insult your intelligence by defending that racials are all perfectly balanced. Clearly they are not, but we also need to realize that there are two sides to this game, and for PvE for example, EMFH suddenly just doesn’t seem so op anymore, except on very specific encounters where a “PvP trinket” effect would give you more uptime.

It has been stated before that devs aren’t too happy about racials and our most distinguishable anthropomorphic crabbie even went so far as to say that if he were to design WoW from scratch, there would be no racials. The thing is, racials have been a part of the game for so long that everyone likes them and is used to the differentiation they provide, racials were designed with the intent of being some of the most distinctive abilities in the game, shaping distinct traits and providing identity to each of the different races.

That is not to say that there’s nothing we can do about it, far from that, devs are already aware of this issue so you already have their attention, perfecting balance is part of the persistent balancing and tuning of WoW. Keep providing us with feedback and suggestions for different racial implementations that you feel are balanced and highly distinctive both for PvE and PvP at the same time, and I’m sure devs will appreciate it, good ideas are always welcome here at Blizzard and many good ideas that make it into our games can actually be traced back to our community. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

ClassesIs a glyph everyone uses (ie 80%) a good glyph or a bad glyph?
Overall, bad glyph. But, some glyphs are fun but very situational. They get underreported because they're used but not for long. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Im worried the DK 4piece set bonus will make Frost mandatory in 5.2 with SR benefiting from KM procs. Thoughts?
SR hits harder for Unholy and Frost has to give up KM buffing something else when they use SR. We think DPS benefit is close. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Regarding Blinding Light nerf: Why don't you just make Repentance replace HoJ like FoJ, to reduce CC to 2 instead of 3?
That's interesting. Would like to see more discussion on it. (Repent replaces HoJ but no BL cast even for Holy.) (Source)why is no one concerned that all three of our CCs can be dispelled?
Dispellable CC should be the norm. "You can't counter me," isn't good for PvP. (Source)

I have no idea what you're doing with Blinding Light. You're nerfing it roughly the same way you did with Hungering Cold.
But not for the melee (Ret and Prot). That was the problem with HC. Healers are used to actually casting. (Source)

"Holy paladins are the most dominant healer in high-end PvP." Not the opinion of top-pvpers at least.Very nonchalant statement
Last I looked, they were the most common above 2200. Who do top-end PvPers think is the most dominant? (Source)

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)why nerf FoL so much? Its not like spriests are spamming this in their normal rotation
Shadow needs a PvP nerf. What would you suggest? (Source)

Agreed. PoH nerfed, and Blizzard obviously doesn't want PW:S blanketing, only other real option is Atonement.
I don't get the "We can't use PWS and we can't use PoH now so we're doomed." Use some PoH and use some PWS. Use the whole toolbox. (Source)But why use PW:S now when mastery is only going to affect PW:S and divine aegis, which already relies on crit?
It's an instant spell that can prevent like 100K of damage.... (Source)

so where are the healing priest buffs for pvp. Nothing good enough yet. They really need more and you know it
They got a lot. New set bonus. Glyphs baked in. Stuff undispellable. (Source)New set bonus is worse than before. We lose out on PW:S giving ~28% reduction for 4seconds. And SS is BAD in PvP.
This is an example of competing feedback. Heard a lot of players saying Diamond Soul was meh but they missed Holy Spark. (Source)

Shadow priest can heal over 100k with a flash heal, Yet u thought second wind is op?! Now a Warrior will die within 1 stun, GG
We nerfed Shadow Flash too. (Source)

Thoughts on moving the disc current 4pc (holy spark) to the 2pc and scrapping the resil one? pvp disc still lacking in thruput
Actually discussed that. Would have to make sure 2pc Holy Spark wasn't attractive for PvE. That's why it's 4pc today. (Source)I could get behind this. And so what if Holy Spark is decent in PvE? Didn't you say Disc doesn't ST enough?
True that, but making a PvP set bonus mandatory for PvE won't win us many friends. (Source)

With the changes to Rapture and PW:S on PTR, Weakened Soul seems archaic. Also, Disc's mastery seems uninspiring now.
Didn't you sort of imply you are going to PW:S more (which is buffed by mastery)? (Source)

what's the plan for discs AOE now? With the DA nerf to POH, disc lacks in aoe; are we supposed to shield spam like wrath?
PW:S or SS+PoH or IF+PoH=DA for incoming damage. PoH for damage already done. (Source)

Is the Flash heal change on the PTR intended to increase healing on Flash for Disc, or just nerf it for Shadow?
Nerf it for Shadow. (Source)

Doesn't Disc tend to post better numbers than direct healing just because absorbs go before direct heals?
Yes. But that still means Disc is doing more for the group than the healers who are getting their heals sniped. (Source)Are you saying then disc throughput when single healing = other healers, but in a group, disc snipes better?
Hard to even find Disc single heals on logs. Would take longer to answer that question. Sniping used to be what hots did. (Source)

What are some of the plans for Shadow in 5.2, will we see a nerf in pvp, will insanity be useful without cancelling a dot?
Discussing what the right nerf for PvP is, but we think they need one. Redesigning Insanity. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Why are Warlocks getting so much love over mages? Massive updates in cata, new quests to come, and massive utility in raids?
Nobody was playing warlocks. Lots of players playing mages. Just part of it though. Locks also lacked a strong identity. (Source)So does that mean Rogues are getting an overhaul next expansion? Because while I love the class, it feels stale.
We don't think they need a lock-level overhaul. We do agree rotations are still too similar across specs. (Source)
Not trying to discount feedback, but mages have interesting rotations, a good kit, a lot of cool spells, and competitive DPS. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)What was wrong with defensive stance giving a low amount of rage per hit? Are you afraid that prot warriors will stack haste?
We heard from Prot warriors who felt they were punished if they ever kited or otherwise weren't beating on something every sec. (Source)

Frustrating watching community tell you Arms lacks tools to scale yet changes made in opposite direction. Ugh++ latest PTR.
Other warriors told us the changes we made were extreme and would make haste and mastery dramatically trump crit. (Source)

Can you explain why the hunter's execute "Kill shot" never hits as hard as say... a warriors execute??
Different spells are different. FWIW warriors often complain that Execute hits too hard (lowering their dps for early fight). (Source)

Characterare you adding more sha touched weapons in 5.2 or do I need to race and get my heroic gun so I can upgrade it twice before 5.2
That's the challenge of every tier transition. You can go nuts trying to upgrade your gun, but it won't last forever. (Source)

So will the players be refunded all the valor/conquest/honor points they used for upgrades?
Why? We don't give you refunds for Valor items you purchased. What's the difference? (Source)

If you get tired of your main and don't want the drudge of gearing an alt what's left then?
That's the key. OTOH, if alts can be geared up too fast, you might feel like you're done with everything. (Source)

Will I ever get to use my gem/Eye enchant if I don't get a Sha weapon drop? Will they be useless once 5.2 hits?
Not the instant 5.2 hits, but they won't last forever. (Source)

please explain why you're removing item upgrade when the problem stated was from pvp when its pve that gets the best use of it
Say you have 1000 V. Do you upgrade an item or buy a new one? P.S. There is a wrong choice. Justice might be fine. (Source)

what is my incentive to come back if it still takes me 2-3 months to just raid with my friends and not gimp their group?
Where did the 2-3 month number come from? It's not going to be one day, but.... (Source)

Can a priest transmog their 1h mace into, say, a sword, in 5.2? Or do you still need to be able to equip it?
You still must be able to equip it. (Source)

TCG Pets Giveaway Update
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Winners will receive a PM on the forum / WoWDB which they have 72 hours to reply to. After that, a new winner will be selected. Don't forget to log in and check your PMs!

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Tides of War Machinima
If you were waiting for the movie version of Tides of War or just want to know some more of the story behind the Theramore scenario, this may help.

now coming again, Oh I'm innocent I just catch up in those wintraded..unban me..etc..etc.etc , those actions must be taken long time ago with much more punishments!
and machinima is crap, some unrealted screenshow,changing too fast and hardly messing with any lore too hard to catch smth , plus worst music for that...Withing temptation, srsly?

now coming again, Oh I'm innocent I just catch up in those wintraded..unban me..etc..etc.etc , those actions must be taken long time ago with much more punishments!
and machinima is crap, some unrealted screenshow,changing too fast and hardly messing with any lore too hard to catch smth , plus worst music for that...Withing temptation, srsly?

Kalecgos joins the Kirin tor, the Kirin tor join the Alliance...so how does this play out?

Remember, despite him being the aspect of magic, he no longer holds it's power thanks to Dragon Soul. Right now, the Kirin Tor is a strong faction, but nothing more then that. Don't forget, the Blood Elves are on horde side, back when they were still High Elves they were the ones who taught the humans how to use magic.

[Suggestion] Bring back the Night!
Wow! Alright alright, we hear you. This seems almost like a unanimous opinion on this thread…
We’ll let the devs know how you feel about this. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)